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Delivery experts wish retailers many fewer unhappy returns


Te growth in home deliveries has cut car journeys, eased congestion and lowered emissions, visitors to Multimodal 2015, the UK’s largest freight and transport event, heard this week. However, Fastlane warned that the escalating level of customer returns is threatening to undermine the environmental benefits of internet shopping.


Speaking at Multimodal 2015, held at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, Fastlane International’s Head of Public Relations, David Jinks MILT, says: ‘Te message from Multimodal is clear. Retailers must address the serious issue of ever-increasing customer returns.’ Audiences at Multimodal heard that e-tailers are grappling


with return rates as high as 60 per cent, whereas 5 or 6 per cent is the norm for traditional brick and mortar retailers. David reveals: ‘Te return rate is growing significantly faster than the overall growth in e-commerce at the moment, and that’s a very worrying trend. Te high rate of returns is costing retailers £20bn a year. But it’s the environmental cost that is so concerning. Unnecessary returns mean more vehicle movements, more congestion and increased pollution.’ And David adds consumers are not to blame. ‘Te urban myth


that everyone is constantly ordering clothes in several sizes and then returning those we don’t want is not really true. Of course many of us have done exactly this from time to time, but as industry analysts Clear Returns revealed at Multimodal, clothes’ size-related issues only add up to around 10 per cent of total returns.’ Explaining why returns are rising, David says: ‘Some retailers are undoubtedly being short-sighted and looking for easy sales,


but in fact they are ultimately losing money on their transactions. Misleading descriptions - making an item sound something it isn’t - lead to increased returns. Similarly, pictures that make an item look larger or better finished are also highly likely to result in returned items; as shoppers grow less tolerant, and ever-more likely to return items that don’t exactly match their expectations. David observes: ‘Te same items can come back again and


again and, after the second return there’s unlikely to be any margin left, so retailers are being extremely short-sighted in using misleading sales tactics.’ David concludes: ‘Timeliness is also often a big issue in returns.


A new industry report published this week has highlighted the ever increasing demand for click and collect. If an item is needed for a particular day or event and the delivery was missed, it means yet another unhappy returned delivery.” Tis key topic, along with other critical operations & customer


service essentials will be covered at the DCA’s Operations Excellence Forum which takes place at Leicester Tigers on June 25th. For more information about this highly topical event as retailers prepare for the Christmas season please go to www.direct-commerce-association.com or call the DCA team on 01271 855545


Direct Commerce | www.directcommercemagazine.com


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